Looks like people in the UK are really digging the Palm Pre. The Palm Pre is more anticipated than the iPhone with 26% of mobile users having some interest in getting one. The iPhone scored just 16% of interest back in 2007.

Many users want to switch to O2 from another carrier just to get the Palm Pre. This is really saying something, because as we all know, the iPhone still has the upper-hand as far as marketing and awareness. Very interesting. We will have to watch and see what happens. Any predictions?

The Palm Pre just keeps getting better doesn’t it? Hot on the heels of showing up on Amazon for $99, Walmart is selling the Pre for $79.99.

That’s on contract and with mail-in rebate. Not great news for those of you who dropped $200 a few months ago though. If you’ve been waiting on a deal for the Palm Pre, this is it. It won’t get much cheaper. We think.

It appears that with the recent release of iTunes 9, Apple has once again cut-off direct access for the Palm Pre’s iTunes support. We had seen it before with the release. It shouldn’t be too big of a surprise to Palm owners however, since Apple said the connectivity wouldn’t last long and they’ve thwarted Palm’s access in the past with iTunes iTunes 8.2.1.

It’s easy to see arguments on both sides of this issue, as frustrating as it might be for Palm owners. On one side Apple would like iTunes users to use Apple products to connect directly to iTunes, such as iPods or iPhones. But, they also have been a proponent of non-DRM music and are essentially making it difficult for other devices to get access to the music through their application.

The Palm Eos smartphone is expected to start shipping in October, according to a DigiTimes report. The GSM/HSPA device will eventually be produced at numbers between 400,000 and 500,000 per month. A CDMA EVDO version of the device is expected to ship in the first quarter of 2010. This latest bit of news supports earlier reports that AT&T will get it first in North America.

To refresh your memory, the Eos features a 2.6-inch, 320×400 multi-touch display, QWERTY keyboard and a thickness of just 0.42 inches. The device would slot in under the Palm Pre, losing Wi-Fi and including 4GB of built-in memory and a 2-megapixel camera. Access to 3G networks as well as assisted GPS and Bluetooth are retained.

Lets take a moment to honor coders, those genius nerds that do the impossible every day. Their latest trick? They’ve stumbled upon a pre-alpha on-screen keyboard for the Palm Pre that was cleverly hidden away in the depths of webOS.

Portrait or landscape version doesn’t matter, the native keyboard will be available, compatible with virtually any app and every field. Most are likely used to the QWERTY keyboard available on the Palm Pre, but if you like virtual better, then this is pretty awesome.

If you want a Palm Pre for $99.99, then head over to LetsTalk. The company is offering the Palm smartphone for $99 after a combination of mail-in and instant discounts, though it appears that you need to order before the end of today if you want to be eligible.

The Pre is new (not refurbished) and requires a two-year agreement with Sprint, but that’s no different to what the carrier or Amazon would expect of you. Once this rebate expires who knows what deals, if any, the company will be offering. If you’ve been waiting for the Palm Pre to get cheap, head over there now.

Here’s some good news for Pre fans who haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet. The newest Best Buy ad shows the handset on sale for just $99 on a two-year contract. That’s $100 less than the previous price. The timing is interesting. This comes just a few days after Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said that “it’s too early to tell” if the Pre’s a hit.

Well, this should put his mind at ease and boost sales. The question is, is this just a one-week sale or a permanent price drop? You better grab one quick, just in case.

There’s a select group of people living among us that make no sense at all. Like this guy, who is willing to endure a painful and permanent tattoo in order to win a Palm Pre. Hell, just buy the phone. It’s not nearly as painful and in a few years you’ll be on to the next big phone.

Obviously the dude wanted his fifteen minutes of fame. It looks more like 15 minutes of lame. This guy and the Zune guy need to get together and talk about their next project. They would make quite a team.

Well that didn’t take long. Just the other day we reported that Palm had reached 700,000 downloads and today we are up to a million. That’s pretty amazing. Especially when you consider that less than 30 applications were available from the App Catalog for a single device, which is available only on Sprint in the US.

While we don’t have any official numbers from Palm, the figure comes from industry analysts who suggest that 150,000 Pre devices were shipped since the June 6th retail introduction. That’s an average of about seven apps downloaded per phone.

It hasn’t been long and there may not be a ton of Pre apps available yet, but apparently there are enough for an impressive 666,511 downloads as of June 17th. By now it is likely close to or past the 700,000 mark.

I’d call that a success. As shown in the above graph, they’ve been rising steadily as more apps become available, and we don’t see any signs of the numbers dropping. It’s still early, but things are looking great for Pre app downloads. That graph is sure to spike as more fart and beer apps show up.

Some clever fellows looking at the script files on the Palm Pre’s operating system have noticed that the Pixie name showed up, suggesting that Pixie would be on Palm’s new OS. Why not? It’s not really a shock that Palm would use and re-use the OS. They worked hard on it.

Still, it’s nice to know that the seemingly low-priced device will have most of the good stuff of its predecessor. The Pixie is supposed to come to AT&T in the US.

Palm and Sprint haven’t confirmed the numbers officially, but according to JPMorgan in a Wall Street Journal article, “sales in the first two days probably exceeded 50,000.” The figure was “aligned with expectations, but probably fell short of the 146,000 reported first-gen iPhone sales” during its opening weekend. And that was due to “capacity constraints in manufacturing.”

So it looks like the Pre launch was a success. Next weekend’s sales may put it all in perspective. It’s great news for Palm, but it isn’t all roses. We’ll have to see if new Palm owners are still having problems or not.

Today there are some reports from at least two Palm Pre forums of screen distortion affecting the recently launched Pre. Palm has yet to acknowledge the issue, but there’s a lot of discussion at the Precentral forums, where most of the affected users are reporting a similar circular distortion at the bottom of the Pre’s screen., While at the EverythingPre forums, there are similar complaints.

It seems like some Sprint stores are aware of the issue, and have been exchanging the handsets for new ones, if they have the stock. There is some photo “evidence”, some of it more compelling than others. Though some of the “distortion” has been ID’d by users as a normal part of the background design.

By now everyone knows that the Palm Pre has iTunes support. But Pre’s identity to its host system when connected via USB has confirmed what was already suspected. The method that it uses to hook into iTunes is…questionable.

The Pre identifies itself as an iPod in Media Sync mode, but only on the system’s mass storage interface. The root USB node still comes through as a Palm Pre. Apple could, if they wanted to, easily block it. Would Apple do that? It would certainly help grow their user base to let it be.

There’s no way to know for sure if the linked document is authentic or not. It builds on the original, from a few days back. It sems like a lot of trouble to go through for a joke or hoax, but there are some sick and bored people out there.

I mean, it’s a 31 page PDF file showing Palm Pre inventories for every Best Buy in the US and Puerto Rico. If this is bunk, than someone has a very sad life. Make of it what you will. Maybe it will help you get a Pre.